It’s Day 3 of THE JACKLIGHTER’s pre-launch phase on Kickstarter, and I’m thrilled to report that things are already off to a promising start. ๐ As of this writing, The Jacklighter is trending #6 out of 206 projects in Kickstarter’s “most popular upcoming nonfiction” publishing categoryโand I have my fabulous first 11 followers to thank for that early momentum....
Carla Conti’s Blog Posts
The Wait Is OverโTHE JACKLIGHTER Is Now LIVE on Kickstarter! Itโs happening. ๐ After months of R&D, THE JACKLIGHTER: Murder, Betrayal, and Justice in Pennsylvaniaโs Endless Mountains is finally live on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform for creatives. This is a FOLLOW Phase … Backing with Pledges & Rewards Comes Next Month! This project, my second true crime book, is...
The 2025 Newsletter Archives are Now Open If youโve been following my journey here on the blog, you know that the “story behind the story” is often just as gripping as what’s on the page. Between my awards, the #1 bestseller badges, andย regaining my publishing rights forย Chained Birds, 2025 has been a whirlwind. But thereโs a whole side of...
(This article has been updated with new details and images from its original September 2024 publication.) My true crime memoir, Chained Birds, chronicles the ten-year journey of federal inmate Kevin Sanders as he fought to survive the blood-soaked Special Management Unit at Lewisburg Prison. While the book serves as an exposรฉ of that now-shuttered experimental program, it also reveals...
Award-winning author Carla Conti recaps 2025 milestones, from eight true crime book awards to THE JACKLIGHTER Kickstarter teaser.
This is an end-of-year video wrap-up about my book, CHAINED BIRDS, appearing on my new YouTube channel โฆ every videoโs theme is about the high cost of truth. For a long time, the only price I thought I’d pay was the ten years I spent writing it. I was wrong. The storyโa true-crime memoir centered on my attorney-friend Scott...
Despite my best intentions not to create more work for myself, I just launched a YouTube channel to host videos that are too damn large for this WordPress blog. I didn’t really want to get into making videos (I should be writing ๐), but I had no choice, because my new videos are just too many megabytes. And you...
What a way to end the year ๐ฅณ I’m delighted to share that Chained Birds has been named Best Crimemoir of 2025 by AudioBookReviewer! Honestly, I’d forgotten I had even entered into the awards program, so when I received the news, it felt like an unexpected gift to cap off this incredible year. And fun fact: my book was...
Looking ahead to 2026, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be presenting a workshop called True Crime Uncovered at the 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference in Lancaster, PA, May 15-17, 2026! This is a particularly meaningful opportunity for me, as I first attended the conference this past spring as a debut author still finding my way in the publishing world....
This weekend, my local writer’s group, the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime, had the great pleasure of welcoming award-winning author, CNN journalist, and master storyteller John DeDakis as our guest speaker. John’s presentation, “From Journalist to Novelist (Or How I Learned to Start Making it Up),” was thoroughly entertaining, and some of us followed up with great...
How I became a #1 Amazon Bestseller in Three Categories 11/16/2025 Update, Two Weeks later … Since I wrote my original post on Nov. 2, 2025, Chained Birds added a third #1 Best Seller Amazon badge in True Crime: Organized Crime, giving me a trifecta of orange badges. For a few days, I even held that #1 ranking along...
I want to thank my friend and podcaster Cameron Santana for having me on his show, Santana True Crime, this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Chained Birdsโnow an Amazon Best Sellerโand to talk about my next book, The Jacklighter! You can watch our hour-plus interview on Spotify, catch some outtake shorts on YouTube, or listen to the...
This past year, I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at three local-to-me book clubs that assigned Chained Birds: A Crimemoir to their members. I can’t adequately convey what it meant to me, as a debut author, to be welcomed by these groups and treated as a guest of honor. I have finally compiled a list of...
This summer has been a whirlwind for me. After reclaiming the rights to my award-winning bookย Chained Birds, I took the leap into indie publishing. Itโs been a liberating experienceโone thatโs pushed me to explore new platforms and opportunities, like making my audiobook available on Spotify. Yes,ย Chained Birdsย is now streaming on the same platform whereย Taylor Swiftโsย chart-topping hits live. And while...
๐ October is right around the corner, and so is one of my favorite book festival events! Iโm thrilled to announce that on Saturday, October 4, 2025, Iโll be joining the Delaware Valley Chapter of Sisters in Crime at the 23rd Annual Collingswood Book Festival in downtown Collingswood, NJ. This vibrant, six-block celebration of books, authors, and readers promises...
๐ฅ Iโm overjoyed to announce that Chained Birds: A Crimemoir has been named a finalist in the 2025 Page Turner Awardsโ Book Adaptation Needed category! ๐ This recognition is particularly meaningful because the Page Turner Awards celebrate books with cinematic potentialโan exciting prospect for any author dreaming of seeing their work adapted for the screen. ๐ฌ The winners will...
Better late than never! Seven months after receiving this one and only editorial review for my author-narrated audiobook of Chained Birds, I am finally posting it in its entirety. I’m extremely pleased to immortalize this review by AudioBookReviewer.com, even though the reviewer wasn’t so fond of the book’s political aspect. That is the reason, I suspect, for the four-star...
I am SO jazzed to be appearing on three author panels at this year’s Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference, followed by book signings of Chained Birds after each one in the Killer Nashville Bookstore! Fun fact: all bookstore signings are open to the public ๐ So if you’re a crime fiction, thriller, or true crime fan in Nashville next weekend,...
There’s a reason I’ve been missing in action here, on social media, and on the pickleball court this summer … I’ve been busy getting my Chained Birds rights reverted from my former publisher to re-launch it under my own imprint. That’s right, I’ve had a friendly divorce from my traditional publisher, and have now gone “indie” by re-launching my...
As part of my “Author’s Cut” re-boot of Chained Birds, I am making available to the public the video surveillance footage of the 2011 recreational cage fight at Lewisburg Prison that essentially launched this book. It’s grainy and brutal, and thankfully the victim survived and walked away on his own … still, viewer discretion is advised. The participants**, from...
This is the second of two prison stabbing videos I’ve made available to the public as part of my re-launch of Chained Birds: A Crimemoir. Like the first one, it’s grainy and brutal, and the victimโfederal inmate Kevin Sandersโsurvives … but just barely. The 2013 footage from USP Florence in Colorado begins with an Aryan Brotherhood (AB) of Texas...
Iโm thrilled to announce that Chained Birds has been recognized as a True Crime finalist in the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards! Thank you, NIEA, for this literary honor and for adding to my Spring collection of True Crime awards! ๐ธ๐๐ The NIEA is a prestigious program that celebrates independent publishing across a wide variety of genres. With a...
In this whirlwind year of a book launch, conferences, and awards, I’m trying to appreciate each milestone, and that includes a new author interview posted by IndieReader Discovery Awards, which named Chained Birds its 2025 True Crime category winner. I was delighted when IndieReader reached out for the interview, and told editor Amy Edelman that I love the ideology...
One of the key benefits of attending writers’ conferences is the people you meet, and this interview with a fellow author and blogger is a lovely example of one of those spinoffs. I had the great pleasure of meeting Christina Boyd at the April Chanticleer Authors’ Conference in Bellingham, Wash., where we both won book awards. She took home...